BACP Accreditation criteria for online counselling and supervision
I am pleased, nay thrilled, to tell you that the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) now formally accept online counselling via e-mail, forums and IRC in support of:
a. the 150 hours of supervised practice post training (Criteria 4.1 and 4.2)
b. Professional Development (Criterion 6.)
c. Personal Development (Criterion 7)
Applicants who include on-line counselling will need to show:
1. that the activity was contracted counselling rather than any other activity involving the use of counselling skills.
2. that they have undertaken some specialist training in on-line therapy and are competent to work within this specialised area. Such training would normally take place after the applicant’s core practitioner training and would be admissible as Continuing Professional Development (Criterion 6). It is not admissible as core practitioner training (Criterion 4).
Online Supervision
Online therapy is not normally recommended for novice or inexperienced practitioners or those in training without focused ongoing support and guidance from expert specialists in the field.
The BACP counsellor / psychotherapist accreditation scheme currently accepts online supervision hours for giving and receiving supervision. At present applicants submitting online supervision must demonstrate how they have met the 1.5-hour a month requirement.
As yet, BACP have no definitive means of calculating the time commitment, and so have invited me to consult with the Professional Standards Committee and Accreditation Assessors in May to thrash out those final details. This will unfortunately not be in time to include those hours in the 3rd Edition of the Guidelines, but links to updates will be included in the resource appendix.
I’ve been working towards this since the Guidelines were first published in 2001, so please join me in a big *YAY*!!
Kate
Congratulations Kate! I have come to realize how long you have been working on this. This is great news for the whole world of online counseling!
This is great news – BACP once again leads the world on this perhaps? Do any other professional associations in psych/mental health/counselling/therapy accept online supervision as contributing to accreditation (or local equivalents) in this way?
It has taken a thoughtful 10 years+ to get to the point where online working is accepted alongside face to face therapy as a recognised professional activity and this new development puts it right where it should be. I recall the first discussions on the subject in BACP and the landscape looks very different now than it did then – thanks to the work put in by the pioneers like you, Kate. The profession should be aware that it would not have happened without your expert input: shifting the online counselling world and the counselling profession onwards another step – important, valuable for all in the field and very very welcome.
A new discussion board has been opened in the OTI members’ forums for discussion of professional issues, the first being on the recognition of online work by professional bodies in all parts of the world.
OTI members can access this by clicking on the forum link on this page or at https://server21.olicentral.com/onlinetherapy.oli.us/index.php?topic=30.0
This is awesome Kate!!!!
Leading the world and pushing the envelops. A huge congrats!!!
This is fantastic Kate! It really is a good public recognition of online counselling / therapy. Surely it must make the BACP a world leader as Stephen says! I will certainly spread the word of this development in my networks
I have just joined BACP especially because of the existence of the ethical guidelines authored by yourselves. As someone working in online mental health in a globalized setting, it is important to me to align myself with an ethical framework that most accurately matches my practice needs!
Thank you!
Yay!!!